George Sanchez
Director George J. Sanchez, professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History, was appointed Director
of College Diversity in April 2008. He is responsible for ensuring that the USC College
fundamental commitment to the benefits of a diverse College community is effectively translated into best practices
in areas such as faculty recruitment and retention, graduate student programs, and undergraduate research experiences
and advancement. He works with all College departments to address what the commitment to
diversity means in various disciplinary settings. To ensure the College efforts have an impact
beyond the immediate community, he works with a variety of national organizations and foundations on the development of special
programs and research agendas. Given the importance of this work and the breadth of these
responsibilities, he reports directly to the Dean of the College. An award-winning scholar of Chicano history and immigration who joined the College faculty in 1997, Sanchez is director
of the USC Center for Diversity and Democracy. He is the former director of American studies and ethnicity, a program he helped
build into one of the top American and ethnic studies departments in the nation. Sanchez helped bring to USC a $3.6 million
James Irvine Foundation grant supporting underrepresented doctoral students when he was director of the Irvine Fellowship
Program. A renowned mentor, he has served on the advisory board for both the USC Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program
and the McNair Scholars Program. He has placed thirteen former Ph.D. students in tenure-track
positions throughout the United States. A former president of the American Studies Association,
he now chairs its Committee on Graduate Education. Sanchez also serves on minority scholars committees of the Organization of
American Historians and the American Historical Association. Sanchez’s 1993 book, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles,
1900–1945 (Oxford), earned six awards in fields such as immigration history and Western history. His article “
‘What’s Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews’: Creating Multiracialism on the Eastside During the
1950s” won the 2005 Constance Rourke Prize for best article appearing in American Quarterly. He is
also series co-editor of American Crossroads: New Works in Ethnic Studies from University of California Press,
which has published twenty-five works in that field over the past decade, many that have won major scholarly awards in a variety
of disciplines. He is presently working on a book about
the impact of Mexican migration upon late 20th century Los Angeles culture, and a historical study of multiethnic
interaction in East Los Angeles. Sanchez received his bachelor’s from Harvard in 1981 and his
Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1989. Before USC he taught at UCLA and the University of Michigan.
Robin D. G. Kelley
Associate Director Robin D. G. Kelley is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at USC.
He is the author of several books, including Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban
America (Beacon, 1997), Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon, 2002), and his
forthcoming Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (The Free Press, 2009). His
writing bridges the gap between the academy and the general public and attempts to intervene in current social
and political debates. He consults for film, television, and other media, and his essays have appeared in dozens
of publications, including U. S. News and World Report, The Nation, Monthly Review, Counterpunch, Village Voice,
New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Color Lines, Code Magazine, Utne Reader, New Politics, Black
Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, One World, Black Scholar, Metropolis, American Visions, Boston Review, New Labor Forum,
Souls, Metropolis, to name a few. Kelley also co-edited and helped write The Young Oxford History of African
Americans, a series of small books for young readers.
Adam Bush
Adam Bush was born in Los Angeles and received his undergraduate education at Columbia University,
a MA in the History of Consciousness Department at University of California, Santa Cruz, and is a doctoral candidate
in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity at USC. Prior to beginning his graduate training, Adam traveled extensively
in the United States researching black cultural production, alternative pedagogy, and the origins of jazz education.
Since 2005, Adam has served as the Director of Experiential Education for the MET Schools and the Big Picture Company, where
he designs and leads oral history travel programs. These programs teach interview skills and methods for undertaking
advanced research around issues of race, class, gender, music, migration, gentrification, and human rights in cities as
diverse as Chicago, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Greensboro, which allow students, upon return, to examine their own home
city with new eyes. Adam also works with the American Studies Association to highlight innovative K-16 programs as well
as Imagining America, an organization that works to bring civic engagement to the forefront of liberal arts curricula.
Adam has a bus driver license and will be moving to Providence, RI in the summer of 2009.
Margaret Salazar
Margaret Salazar graduated summa cum laude from California State University Los Angeles in 2005 with a
B.A. in Liberal Studies and her primary education credentials. As an undergraduate, she completed her award-winning
senior thesis and simultaneously taught for two years as a primary educator in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Her academic and professional work is underscored by continual efforts to increase intellectual diversity in the university
and beyond. She founded a feminist organization called Women in Solidarity and Struggle, organized myriad programs encouraging
high school students to discuss issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and volunteered over 1,000 hours as a mentor
in East Los Angeles schools. At USC, Margaret spearheaded the planning of the 4th Annual Crossing Borders Ethnic Studies
Conference (2006), which brought together graduate and undergraduate students from across the nation to challenge disciplinary
boundaries and theorize complicated issues of race, class, and violence. In 2007, she also served as a chair for the Graduate
Students of Color Network, a space for students to discuss university and community policies that do not consider the needs of
minority populations.
Barbara Soliz
Center For Diversity and Democracy Advisory Board
Meet the CDD Staff:
